In a rapidly evolving field such as computational physics, six years is an eternity. Even though many of the elementary techniques described here are of venerable age, their assembly into sophisticated combined methods and their intensive application to ever new problems is an ongoing and exciting process. After six years, a new the new vistas edition of this textbook must therefore take into account some of that have opened up recently. Apart from these additions and some didactic improvements, the general struc ture of the book holds good. The first three chapters are devoted to a thorough,...